maybe its for the best⌠the share price of Affirm, the main competitor of Klarna is the US, declined by 50% in the last monthâŚ
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Maybe this is the wrong bit of the forum but did others get an invite to a Freetrade round happening on Seedrs (a big shift from many years with CrowdCube)âŚ.
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Has anyone any thoughts on SOLIVUS? Revenue generating and management team seem to be at the heart of all things renewable.
Did any one get this email from 1854 media below ?
They are selling our shares by force and âdragging us alongâ?
Who knows how much we will get, if anything?
They raised âŹ1.8m on crowdcube few months ago, who knows what happened to the money??
Glad I didnât invest in this last round.
Dear shareholder,
This is an official notice of Drag-along as per clause 8 of the Articles of Association of 1854 Media Ltd. In line with clause 8 of the Articles of Association it is deemed that a majority of A shareholders have accepted a bona fide offer from an Offeror and that as a result of the proposed transfer the Offeror will hold more than 55% of the issued A Shares.
The Offerees therefore require the dragged shareholders, being effectively all shareholders, to sell their shares to the Offeror at the same price per share and on the same terms as the Offerees, simultaneously with completion of the sale of the Offerees shares to the Offeror.
Share transfer documents and all other relevant documents will be provided to you in due course upon completion of the proposed. Proportionate distribution of ex-shareholder sale proceeds to your nominated bank account will be administered following receipt of completed share transfer and other documentation.
Yours sincerely,
Mark Bounds
Finance Director
1854 Media Ltd
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Probably settled some director loans because they knew theyâd need to sell.
Really odd that the email doesnât say how much theyâve agreed to sell for though.
Yes,makes me think will be peanuts 
.
Fingers crossed.
The raise done was just 6 months ago.
And they promised shareholders a 6x return in 4 years.
@Gold1 unfortunately there are no promises in crowdfunding - itâs always high risk. Good luck.
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Reading this I got a flash back to the study books about âprincipal-principalâ problems, where the majority shareholders do something to the detriment of minority sharesholders. Hope it works out for you guys & founder(s) dont sell their hide cheap to cash in. Will be an interesting case to learn from once we know the valuation as it is one of those companies that seems to have raised exclusively from crowdfunding and no institutionals, who generally take precautions to prevent the above.
Other than that, I invested in hydraloop. I think the main risk is execution, with the massive growth and reliance on partners and getting the foot between the door with new build projects. Other than that, there seems to be enough Western areas in the world where water supply is more strict and/or more expensive to scale for the years ahead and they seemed to have nailed that by focusing there first. I think the idea is great and new / easier to install product line should accelerate growth given its lower installation costs with reasonable valuation, strong team, and great traction (how many others startups appear in a Netflix documentary, lol).
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Did anyone else see that YHangry, who were supposed to offer a round on Seedrs have pulled the offering due to taking a place in YCs Winter 2022 batch.
Definitely disappointed that the opportunity appears to be lost for crowdfunding. For the moment at least. Fingers crossed they return in the future.
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Everybody has a different risk profile so I donât mean to suggest this is a bad idea for every person on the planet but personally I wouldnât touch them with my worst enemyâs money, let alone my own. I have seen their godforsaken adverts on LinkedIn so many times in the last 24 months that I alone must have cost them at least a couple of suckers worth of investment.
Thereâs a lot to be said about their ridiculous pivot, advertising and business, but the biggest red flag is the way they were continuously launching new âroundsâ of âfundingâ which conveniently took place every time they needed their âinvestorsâ to see a valuation bump so theyâd convince their friends to pile in⌠despite none of the rounds ever being fully subscribed.
Consider the $2 round, a target raise of $44.5m which ostensibly increased their valuation from $785m to $1.6bn⌠that round raised $9m, they were less than 25% subscribed. And then they did another round to increase the valuation from $1.6bn to $2.4bn, which raised less than 10% of the target. I guess theyâre valued based on Earnings Before Anyone Looks At Them Close Up.
I have to admire their absolutely brazen insanity though. For example, theyâve now âclosedâ their âprivate funding roundsâ (presumably because their LinkedIn adverts stopped generating any investment, hence the 10% subscription on the last round) and are instead offering a â20% High-Yield Noteâ which is framed as some sort of genius business magic that allows this once-in-a-lifetime company to change the world when itâs actually just horrible, horrible debt. I mean, this quote alone is something that belongs on an episode of Silicon Valley:
The value multiplication capacity of this FinTech project enables us to pay the interest rate of 20%, four times higher the market average.
Theyâre not even junk bonds, theyâre sewage bonds, toxic cholera ridden sewage. Money is everywhere at the moment, itâs sloshing around at absurdly low rates, anybody with any credibility borrow money at rock bottom rates, and here they are offering to pay 20%! 20%! Thatâs comparable to a consumer credit card!
Naturally, the issuance of this horrible debt after failing to fundraise has increased their valuation from $2.4bn to $3.2bn. Iâm starting to suspect their multiplication capacity might just be referring to their ability to bump their own valuation.
If any consumers who invested in TransparentBusiness / Unicorn Hunters lose less than 100% of their investment, Iâll be gobsmacked and consider retiring from ever thinking about investment ever again. Iâm at the point where I enjoy seeing what theyâre up to because itâs always some new and inventive way to defraud people.
They initially started advertising their fundraising using exactly the same language as now but without the âUnicorn Huntersâ narrative, just as the TransparentBusiness SaaS. Early 2020, they promised to go public at $10/share by the end of 2021, then in 2021 they invented this Unicorn Hunters gambit, which included a show that was ostensibly produced for Amazon Prime but it wasnât really, they just paid to have it distributed on Amazon Prime (which anyone can do).
Unicorn Hunters is much like the grifts taking place in crypto. On the one hand, itâs very entraining to watch, on the other, itâs very sad to think about all the people losing their money because regulators allow people to get away with this without any scrutiny.
This doesnât even scrape the surface of the stuff theyâre doing or have done but I need to stop typing.
Disclosure: the position I hold in TransparentBusiness, Inc is keeled over with laughter.
edit: actually one final thing, because itâs a funny fact to end on: they spend more money on producing their tv show than they generate in revenue from their SaaS business. Their business is raising money from LinkedIn adverts.
edit edit: ok ok FINAL point, something I just learned, their software doesnât even generate their revenue. The revenue they do generate comes from âtalent as a serviceâ which is more commonly known as⌠recruitment. Theyâre a recruitment agency masquerading as a software business performing as an investment platform valuing themselves at multiple-billions of dollars based on ~$1m in recruitment revenue.
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Hello S_M,
Completely agree that there are red flags everywhere. I donât do this often but every now and then allow myself a few wildcards. Am curious to see what happens and completely accept that I may lose it all but like any crowdfunding,
But at 20-cents a share, I feel it was worth a punt and compared to many other campaigns that appear to be more stable, these guys are certainly more interesting. Time will tell and 100% open to people calling me a fool in the future ;o)
I almost did out of morbid curiosity because I want to be up close and have the best view when it implodes. I donât begrudge anyone who did invest (whether they expected to lose or expected to win) because it is designed to be a compelling offering, and itâs certainly more fun than buying a lottery ticket, my only ill will is towards the people who consider it acceptable to defraud people. Actually, I donât know if I could even say I have ill will towards them because theyâve given me so much entertainment. Maybe, in a moment of self reflection, I am the ultimate villain: I am enjoying fraud without even making money from it, at least theyâre getting rich, they have a reason.
I actually quite like the Unicorn Show. The concept works and thatâs no different to a SeedInvest raise or equivalent right (taking a US platform for comparison). How they got there is a winding road but the end business looks fairly legitimate?
Personally I think that if a business is built upon fraud (or misrepresentations if you wish to be charitable) then it is very difficult to see a path to success because it no longer depends just upon beating the odds (most startups fail) but it also depends upon a radical shift in how the business operates: sure, the founders can build a business using fraud misrepresentation, but does that mean they can build a business legitimately? Iâd go as far as to say it doesnât just tell us nothing, it tells us they cannot build a legitimate business.
The history of the company and behaviour of the founders alone is enough of an argument to convince me that they arenât going to go on to achieve anything, but for arguments sake Iâll assume history doesnât tell us anything. So on that basis, letâs interrogate Transparent Business / Unicorn Hunters specifically.
Last year Seedrs, the biggest crowdfunding platform in the UK, sold to Republic for $100m. Seedrs was generating ~ÂŁ5m/yr in revenue. Transparent Business is ostensibly valued 34x higher, at $3.4bn, based on $0 in revenue from crowdfunding, near zero software revenue and at best a few million in recruitment revenue (a very low margin business compared to software). The business model of Seedrs is simple: take a cut of money raised through the platform. Unicorn Hunters business model is to take equity in the companies they feature on the show, because of the potential for long term returns â which is much, much higher risk.
Transparent Business has issued somewhere in the ballpark of a billion shares with promises of going public this year for at least $10/share which would value the business at close to $10,000,000,000 with no crowdfunding revenue. If they do not go public by the end of 2022 for at least $10/share, they have to forfeit one of their acquisitions which is responsible for almost all of their recruitment revenue, turning them from a recruitment business into a nothing business.
Then thereâs the money theyâre borrowing. If they manage to borrow the target amount ($10m) from their revolutionary âHigh-Yield Bondâ (which I canât say without laughing) they will have $12m due in 12 months⌠paid for how? Whereâs the money coming from? Another private round? They could barely scrape a 10% subscription on their latest round. Plus, it needs to be emphasised so Iâll say it again: theyâre borrowing at 20%! Thatâs a âlenders think theyâre going to defaultâ rate.
The TV show idea is fine â Iâd argue itâs an inferior approach when compared to, say, a website like Seedrs or SeedInvest or Republic, but itâs definitely possible to see a world in which it could succeed â but this company is rancid. Even if the show was a resounding success, the business would still struggle. Thereâs nothing redeemable about the company, and if there was a prospect of the TV show idea working, why wouldnât ABC or Sony or whoever launch it under the Shark Tank or Dragonâs Den brand? What does Unicorn Hunters have to offer?
24 months ago Transparent Business was advertising an investment in their SaaS business (which is used by a few companies and generates negligible revenue) with grand promises about 30,000% returns⌠and then they pivot to advertising the same investment opportunity with the same language but now itâs a TV show without a network.
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Not a fan then 
Some very good points and you could be right but Iâve seen far more outlandish investments and concepts than this succeed and even thrive. Conversely ones that looked solid and safe turning out to be absolutely rubbish / brutal.
Maybe itâs not a long term money maker but there could be an opportunity to make $ in the shorter term with all the hype and speculation via the IPO, although I donât think right now is a good time for that.
I see their ads on LinkedIn too for the last year or so. 20% interest is, by lack of a better word, insane. Smells like a Ponzi scheme that needs money. Probably going to be spectacular when it popsâŚ
Funny thought: what would the average ROI required per startup from the show (where they got equity) to get to that 3bn valuation? I bet they all need to be unicorns before we even get closeâŚ
Twitter thread on 1854 sale
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Thatâs ridiculous⌠Feel sorry for all the investors, yet another hit in the face for equity crowdfunding. Quite clear that Crowdcubeâs DD counts for nothing, and frankly hard to believe a company can outright put highly unlikely information bordering lies on their campaignâŚ
Reinforces the need to have a VC on board and watch out for those who come back time and time again to crowdfunding without raising capital elsewhere.
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